The Download: a startup has a solution for AI’s groupthink problem

This is today’s edition of The Download , our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

Open up your chatbot of choice—Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini—and type “Give me a random number between 1 and 10.” You’re going to get 7. Almost always.

That won’t work every time—but if it did for you, you may wonder if I have superpowers. I don’t.

The truth is that most large language models are stuck in a rut. They are far more predictable and far less creative in their responses than you might expect. That’s fine for tasks like coding or research, but groupthink is a problem when you’re brainstorming or planning your next vacation.

The Australian startup Springboards has a solution. It built an LLM called Flint, which has been trained to come up with a wider variety of responses than mainstream LLMs to open-ended questions such as “Where should I go in Europe?”

Meet the company pushing chatbots away from the obvious .

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 Scientists say they have built a cell from scratch for the first time Built with lab-made DNA, it can feed, grow, and multiply. ( CNN ) + It brings us closer to creating synthetic life . ( Quanta ) + And is arguably the greatest feat of bioengineering yet. ( New Scientist $) + But also raises concerns over the dangers of synthetic biology. ( NYT $) + Mirror organisms could threaten life on Earth. ( MIT Technology Review )

2 OpenAI has proposed giving the Trump administration a 5% stake Talks over a public ownership deal come amid rising political pressure.( FT $) + OpenAI also proposed other US AI giants providing a 5% stake. ( CNBC ) + That could include Anthropic, Google, and Meta. ( Bloomberg $) + President Trump says he wants the public to have a stake in AI. ( BBC )

3 Singapore has seized a $42 million mansion tied to Nvidia chip smuggling It was seized as part of an investigation into alleged illegal trading. ( BBC ) + Days earlier, Supermicro’s Taiwan offices were raided in the probe. ( FT $)

4 Anthropic’s Fable 5 is back online But queries posing security risks may be routed to less powerful models. ( Axios ) + Anthropic restored access yesterday after the US lifted an export ban. ( BBC ) + But the battle over how to tame AI has just begun. ( WSJ $) + Anthropic has launched a new AI science product. ( MIT Technology Review )